In a recent phone interview from Chicago, where Moore was scheduled to play the Pitchfork Festival, the controversial teen rap group was to take the stage amid roars of protest, the legendary Sonic Youth frontman couldn’t help but share some of his thoughts about an act he admitted his 17-year-old daughter Coco is a fan of.

“I like teenage hip-hop filth,” he said with a laugh, conceding he had to leave the festival before Odd Future’s performance.

The group has recently come under severe criticism for its violent, misogynistic rape and murder fantasy raps.

“This shit really has a nasty edge to it,” Moore said. “You know when you’re 17 and you’re hanging out with your friends and you’re all dudes and talking about shit and it’s really rough: It’s a way to show off you’re more f---ed up than the next guy. That was sort of a secret world.

“So for these guys to be coming out and doing it on stage and go, ‘Yeah, this is how we really talk but we don’t really mean it.’ It’s all fine and good but at the same time I don’t know, I’d like to keep it on the down-low where it’s always been.”

Moore, 52, is no stranger to counter-culture.

For over three decades, he has helped shape and define an entire movement of underground noise and punk rock, Sonic Youth being at the forefront of it all.

With his latest solo album Demolished Thoughts, however, Moore is taking on an entirely different approach.

Produced by Beck, Demolished Thoughts is less about indie rock deconstruction, tonal experimentation and geek-chic cultural referencing and more about heart-on-sleeve songwriting, something that will likely throw off a few Moore/Youth fans.

“I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do with a lot of the songs,” Moore said. “To me, it wasn’t much different than the way I work in poetry circles and doing small press poetry books where you express very personal ideas. And I did some of that with the lyrics [on Demolished Thoughts].

“With a band like Sonic Youth, I try to depersonalize the lyrics to some degree because it is a group effort and I don’t want it to be so pointed and personal. I tend to pull away or modify things and I re-configure the language I’m using and sometimes things will get a little more coded. I was originally going to release [Demolished Thoughts] as a book with a recording inside. But when I ran into Beck last summer, he convinced me into investigating his home recording situation [in L.A.]. And I thought, ‘Okay, this is really interesting. Maybe I’ll just throw everything in Beck’s house and see what comes out of it.’ ”

Demolished Thoughts still finds Moore constructing shape-shifting melodies with surreal tonal textures, but this time it’s on an acoustic guitar rather than on a battered electric where the magic happens.

“Sea Change was such a personal record for Beck and I think he related to where I was coming from with this music,” Moore said. “It was genuine and natural for him to put that kind of production on this record. I wasn’t really thinking about Sea Change while we were working, but it gave me a new impression of and appreciation for Sea Change after we were done.”

Demolished Thoughts’ themes, however clearer they may seem, are still a bit blurry, with songs like Circulation finding Moore singing, “I’m not running away/Circulation makes her crazy/She’s not here to stay/She just came by to shoot you, baby,” while the delicate Blood Never Lies has him stating, “Every time they come for you/You know it’s time to run/Everybody knows it’s true/How your love has come undone.”

“I certainly don’t think I can talk about my personal issues beyond what I’ve recorded,” Moore said. “It gets a little tricky. That being said, the record deals with certain aspects of my life in the last few years. At the same time, I tend to be really dissociative about it or put it in this kind of space removed from being too intimate with reality. I almost create these scripted narrations that are aliases to what the real thing may be because I’m not really ready to write my memoirs so much.”

He laughed, then admitted he had already picked a title for his memoirs: She Moved to New York City to Become a Poet.

“It’s a title I got from [American poet] Anne Waldman,” Moore said. “She runs the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colo. I was at a poetry workshop there a couple of weeks ago and she was introducing one of my favourite poets, Eileen Myles, and said, ‘She moved to New York City to become a poet’ like that was such a happy and devotional thing. It made so much sense even though it has nothing to do with the standards of ambition or success or making money: You just move somewhere to become a poet. It was so beautiful.”

Ironically, Moore’s path is strangely similar, having originally moved to N.Y. in 1976 to join the city’s punk scene and to meet his idol Patti Smith.

So why not I Moved to New York City to Meet Patti Smith instead?

“Right — ‘And Then Patti Smith Moved to Detroit and Married Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith of the MC5 — What Now?’ ” Moore said with a laugh. “Yeah, that’s a little too pointed.”

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Interview: Thurston Moore collects his Demolished Thoughts with Beck’s help

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